Will history remember what’s said in 2012? These five Republican convention speeches live on:
1964: Nominee Barry Goldwater stands his ground with a seminal speech for conservatives: “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. … Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”
1976: After his challenge to President Gerald Ford falls short, Ronald Reagan’s impromptu remarks leave delegates thinking maybe they chose the wrong man. He says of future Americans: “Will they look back in appreciation and say thank God for those people in 1976 who headed off that loss of freedom, who kept us, now a hundred years later, free, who kept our world from nuclear destruction?”
1988: Nominee George H.W. Bush’s speech carries a line that will haunt him as president: “Read my lips: No new taxes.”
1992: After testing President Bush in the primaries, Pat Buchanan sets the house afire with a condemnation of abortion rights, gay rights and encroaching liberalism: “There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war.”
2008: Introducing herself as “just your average hockey mom,” vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin wows the crowd: “The difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick.”
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